Electronic messaging has become a primary mode of communication between parties. The growth in messaging services has been fueled by the increase in mobile electronic devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and the like. Messaging services provide users with the ability to transmit and receive content such as texts, images and videos from electronic devices.
Some messaging services have been created for transmitting and receiving sensitive or private content between its users. These messaging services employ techniques to limit traceability of messages distributed through the service, for example by employing self-destructing or vanishing messages. In this approach, records of the message or message content distributed through the service are removed from the receiver's electronic device and from the server managed by the messaging service once the message has been opened and read by the receiver.
Other messaging services attempt to mask the message content by limiting the receiver's ability to view the message or by restricting the receiver's ability to capture the message content. For example, some messaging services mask the message content in order to limit the receiver's ability to take a screenshot of the message content from their electronic device. These messaging services may blur or blacken the message content and employ a “peephole” or “spyhole”, through which the receiver can view the message. This approach, however, has various limitations. For example, the receiver must continuously select an area on the screen of the electronic device with their finger in order to deploy the peephole. The accuracy of placing the peephole may vary depending on the size of the receiver's finger. Additionally, the size of the peephole limits the receiver to view only that portion of the message revealed by the peephole at any given time. This approach increases the amount of time required for a receiver to view message content.
Known messaging services for distributing sensitive or private content do not allow the sender to vary or influence the user experience of the receiver. For example, a sender may wish to send a message containing sensitive message content to various receivers. The sender may have a high degree of trust with some receivers of the message, and a low degree of trust with other receivers of the message. In this case, a sender may provide trusted receivers with a higher degree of latitude in viewing the message content, and less trusted receivers with a lower degree of latitude in viewing the message content.
In other instances, a sender may wish to vary specific portions of sensitive message content. For example, a sender transmitting banking information through the messaging service may wish to apply a higher degree of privacy to an account number contained in the message content, and a lower degree of privacy to the remainder of the message content.
Known messaging services for distributing sensitive or private message content may not permit the receiver of the message to increase the degree of visual privacy attributed to the message. For example, a trusted receiver may receive sensitive message content and may have been provided a high degree of latitude from the message sender. The receiver, however, may be in a crowded location (e.g., on a crowded train), and may wish to increase the degree of privacy attributed to the sensitive message content such that onlookers cannot easily view the sensitive message content displayed on the electronic device.
Some messaging services mask sensitive message content by applying an opaque or blurred layer on top of the content at the electronic device of the sender, or at the server managed by the messaging server. This approach, however, unnecessarily increases the data required to transmit and receive the message over a communication network.